Bounty0x Hunter guide

As a bounty hunter for months (almost years), I spent a lot of time analyzing and doing bounties in various form for various kind of projects. Sometimes with success… and sometimes with anger (you know what I mean if you are a hunter).I discovered Bounty0x a few months ago and really appreciated a lot of functionalities of the platform. The team is good, the ideas are great, but they are sooo focused on getting the core aspect of the project perfect that they don’t spend a lot of time onboarding newcomers. So I decided to write this “Hunter guide” I would have liked to read when discovering the platform.

Feel free to comment and ask questions. I will update it to make it fully complete with your feedbacks.

WHAT IS BOUNTY0X?

Bounty0x is a modern way to deal with bounty. It brings tools and process that ensure better quality in bounty participations.And life is much easier now.

I used to go on Bitcointalk to find some nice bounties, but there were too many projects that it was very difficult to know which projects were good and which ones were scams. Bounty0x does that part of the job for me, selecting only the project they believe will be legit (you are never 100% sure before the ICO ends).

I used to report every single tweet I did for all kind of projects, spending endless time copying/pasting links. Bounty0x is connected to social media platforms and gather the information by itself: no need for reporting (except for some media or content production of course).

Who loves spending hours reporting links?

I used to try to calculate my potential earnings with the stake system. You know how it works: everyone earns stakes depending on what he/she does, and knows in the end how many tokens its work was worth dividing the global amount by its share. When the project was a success, people ended up working for peanuts… when it was a failure, bounty manager usually tried to change the rules to give you less than your stakes. Bounty0x does it differently, and you know from the beginning how much you can earn, depending on your implication, audience or quality of work. You can then decide which projects you want to join on a well-informed basis.

I’m still free to go on other platforms to participate to other bounties (and I do for projects I really like), but I fell that it is much more comfortable to do it on Bounty0x.

The platform seems more focused on hunters than others. And that matters a lot.

One good way to see it is there transparency reports and distribution reports. You can find it on Medium. They do it monthly. They share the number of projects delivered, active, or waiting to be distributed. They show the best participation. They comment on the problem when they occur. Etc.

Some kind of transparency in the crypto world is cool :)

HOW DOES BOUNTY0X WORK?

There are 3 steps for every bounty.

1. Joining a bounty

Every project (called “Host” on Bounty0x) create various bounties depending on their goal.For example, an ICO may want to increase its social media community and participation and have articles written to share widely their offer. They will then create multiples bounties accordingly.

Example of 4 bounties from a single host. Direct views of the different bounties and of the max rewards / available spots for all of them. Priceless!

For every task asked by the Host, there is a dedicated page where the bounty is managed.

This page is very well done in my opinion, as you will see in a single place :- The description of the project in a few lines, to understand what it is about + links to the main resources needed (whitepaper, website…)- The task asked, with full details and rules- The bounty reward both in Host tokens and in $. That seems obvious but all other bounty websites only communicate in tokens, making it very hard to see quickly how much $ it’s worth. Here, it’s a no-brainer.- The ending dates and remaining participations

So, in a few seconds, you can have a global vision of the project, tasks, and reward, and choose whether you want to join or not. The only thing I would like to be added is something like the ICObench score, to have other opinions on the project.

As said previously, I really like the fact that you know exactly how much you can pretend for. When sharing social content, you have the information depending on your audience size.

social sharing tiers

When writing content, you have the information depending on the quality you will produce (even if knowing the difference between good and excellent is somehow tricky…).

quality tiers

Everything is defined from the beggining. Rules are clear, everyone know how things will be juged and rewarded.

You don’t produce work without knowing how much $ you could earn in the end, and that is of GREAT value!

There is currently one lack in the interface about the reward, is that there will be a fee on what you will earn (normal fee is 15%, it can be lowered as we will see later). The fee is not mentioned nor calculated on the rewards so you will have to do the math by yourself. The fee is a way to help bounty0x grows and develops.

2. Producing the bounty

You want to join the project?Then all you need to do is producing the work asked. Join social media, Share social contents, write articles or Reddit/LinkedIn posts… Done?- For Twitter and Telegram, click on “participate” and that it, Bounty0x will check all by itself (Facebook is on the way, and I guess they will try LinkedIn soon).- For other bounties, click on the “apply” button and share the link toward the content you created. Done!

submission is quick and easy

When submitted, your work will appear in the “submission” menu, in the infamous “pending” tab.The pending tab, it is the place where your work will wait to know if it will go to heaven (“approved” tab) or hell (“rejected” tab). Cross your finger (and do quality job, it helps).

Come on, gon on the “approved tab” kids!

3. Getting your KYC done

More and more projects ask bounty hunters to validate a KYC.Usually, they ask you do send some ID picture and some selfy of you holding your ID and the name of the project. They avoid that way bots and scammers.

I was very mitigated with these projects at first. I didn’t like the idea of sending my ID everywhere on the internet and find it days later on Silkroad like websites. But on the other hand, KYC projects were usually more serious as KYC costs them money. So it is a good signal that they are fully invested in the project and not only scammers spreading free (and useless) tokens to anyone.

One cool thing with bounty0x is that they can do KYC for the Host. So, as a hunter, you submit once your data to Bounty0x (that use well-known KYC services like Onfido or Civic to perform it) and that’s it, you will not have to do it anymore as long as the host uses Bounty0x KYC service.

No more stupid me in my open space, taking selfies with post-it and ID card in front of my colleagues! ;)

4 . Getting reviewed

After submitting the content start the hardest part of the bounty. Waiting.Waiting.And waiting.Did I mention the wait?

You will first need to wait that your task is reviewed.The review is the way bounty0x checks whether your work respects the rules, and in which tier it should be (low/good/excellent quality, etc.) if necessary.The reviewing is done by Sheriffs. Sheriffs are other members of the community (any Hunter can decide to be a sheriff if he wants to) whose purpose is to check the different tasks done by the hunters.They are like “super control machines” who can review one article for a host, then a LinkedIn post for another and finally an RT for a third project. They are rewarded for each review they do, whatever the quality of what they review.

Sheriffs receive various works to review. Be nice with them.

A lot of people complete tasks, and sheriffs need time to check everything, so you usually wait a few days or weeks before being reviewed (sometimes newer task get reviewed very quickly while older one stays stuck in the pending section for weeks…). In any case, the speed is not very important as you will need to wait until the end of the bounty period whatever happens to get your tokens… So don’t freak if nothing happens 3 days after your submission, it is absolutely normal.

When reviewed, your work switch from the “pending tab” to the “approved” tab (or the “rejected” tab if it did not comply with the rules or quality asked.). In the approved tab, you will be able to see the reward you will have when the bounty ends. The amount is taking the fees into account, so it is really what will be sent to your wallet.

Sometimes, you may disagree with a sheriff review. Your work was rejected while you think it is amazing, or you are in a lower tier that you thought.You can then start a dispute within the 7 days after receiving the information.You just have to click on the “!” you see in the picture above. A dispute is a way to call for an arbiter (bounty0x staff) that will have a fresh look on the situation and give the final verdict. Once more, you may need to wait a few days before knowing the result of the dispute. It is not very important as you will get your token anyway if you are right.

Bounty hunting is a school of patience, I guess you know that.Maybe bounty0x should partner with a yoga training startup or something like that to help us let it flow quietly instead of harassing them with “when dispute ends” or “when review is done” ? :)

Maybe bounties won’t get you rich, but they may teach you patience. Stop rushing and relax :)

One interesting thing to know is that Sheriffs are encouraged to score in an honest way. They have to stake some of their BNTY tokens for each review they do, and if they are wrong in one of the dispute they will lose it. So giving quality scoring is very important to them.

5. Getting your reward

The distribution part is usually the best one.It’s always cool to see its bounty wallet getting filled with new tokens.You don’t have anything to get your reward, except filling the wallet addresses in your settings option. Just feel everything at once (ETH, Neo, Wave, Stellar) if you have them, that way you won’t have any problem depending on the blockchain of the project (even if they are still mainly ERC20 tokens).

Most of the time, the distribution is very quick: the Host sent the tokens to the bounty0x team and they distribute it straight away when all the review are done (except for external bounties, where the Host manage everything).

Whoooo ! Lambo!!!

And sometimes… Well, remember the yoga class? :)Sometimes the Host prefers delaying its ICO (as we are in a bear market at this end of 2018) and the token creation. It’s always frustrating (I have a good amount of tokens promised for a super-project-I-hope and they postponed their ICO for months, even if they are still working as usual on the project) but I always think it’s better for everyone. It is stupid to do an ICO when no-one wants to buy, gather a few bucks, and stop the project 6 months later because of lack of funding… better wait a few more weeks that spring comes after winter!You know it happens when people come on the Telegram and ask the same question about the same project to the bounty team, that can do much more than explaining the situation.I think it is part of the hunting mindset. You know you do work for tokens that may be worth a lot, that may be worth nothing, or that may sometimes not even exist. I just try to maximize the first ones and avoid the others, but you never know!We will speak of the way to choose bounties later, but first I wanted to make a focus on…

HUNTER FEES AND STAKING

As I told you, there are fees taken on the reward every hunter earns.It’s a way for bounty0x to make a living, so I am fine with that.You just have to keep them in mind, as they are currently not mentioned on the website so it can be a surprise otherwise.I guess they don’t mention directly the “reward without fee” amount because the fee may vary.Normal fees are 15%. But you can lower it by staking tokens.That means that if you have BNTY tokens on your wallet (you can buy it on Kucoin or sometimes earn it on bounty0x bounties) you can stake it on the bounty0x website and reduce the fees.Here are the current fees depending on how much you want to stake.

If you believe in bounties in general and in bounty0x in particular, it can be a good strategy to buy some tokens: you will both take advantage of low fees while staking and may see your investment increase in valor if the token price pumps in the following weeks or months.

BNTY is referenced on the Kucoin exchange

HOW TO CHOSE A BOUNTY?

There are a lot of bounties. Even on Bounty0x.Different strategies may apply, depending on what you want to do. And I think that I would start by this point.

1. Chose the categories of the bounties you like

Some of you will have a huge Twitter community, a great Reddit karma, a huge Linkedin network and may want to take advantage of that. Social media bounties will be perfect for that.Others (like me) prefer going deeper in projects and write a high-quality piece of content, finding a creative way to interest people in reading it. Article or Creative bounties will be dedicated to them.

I think that starting with something you like, know well to do and are good at is the best way to be efficient and happy doing a bounty.

The filter option of Bounty0x is not perfect (I would suggest some more stuff to filter or organize) but it is one of the best I saw in the bounty websites, so you will definitely be able to find something you will like to do!

2. Focus on “internal bounties”

Hosts can choose whether they want Bounty0x to manage everything (gathering proof of work, reviewing them, distributing the tokens) or whether they want to do all by themselves, and only use Bounty0x to reach their community (that is an external bounty).We may think that internal bounties might be safer, as Bounty0x get more work managing them.

3. Double check the seriousness of the project

Some people will spend a very small amount of time on the bounty every day (like the social share bounties) to write some content (tweets, small LinkedIn posts…). They don’t need to spend too much time choosing the project, they just go and create. That is fine: when spending a few amount of time you can just rely on the bounty0x selection and focus on your social powa!When you spend hours on a project, reading every detail of the whitepaper before writing an article or creating a sweet infographic piece, you will need to be totally convinced you invest time in the right project.One of my technics (on top of personal opinion) is checking scoring websites like ICObench. Even if they are not perfect, it can give great insights reading the expert opinions. It can also give you some more ideas for your content production highlighting things you didn’t see or giving another angle in the way to present the project.

I had fun developping a quick ICObench scraping to get the score and votes for the projects that interested me.

REMINDER

If you did already hunting this point will be obvious, but I want to make it clear here: no reward will never be 100% sure. Ever. Nowhere.We are in the wild wild west with crypto: nothing is regulated yet, there are scammers everywhere and teams that think they can create a breakout company but will fail to do it because the “crypto happy hour” is far behind us (and people get more and more suspicious before investing)… So spend your time accordingly.

Like in investment, only spend the time you don’t need and can lose.

Bounty0x does what it can as a platform, but will no be able to filter 100% of the bad projects. Because sometimes it is not even possible to know which projects will be bad or good (business angles would not have a success rate of 10% if it was that easy). So don’t blame them for any bad project you might have joined: we are all responsible here for our choices.

CONCLUSION?

I really like this platform. Of course, not everything is perfect, and I had long speeches with the team about things that would need to be optimized. But the project is young and full of energy. And, overall, they provide the best service I saw until now: large choice of quality ICOs, easiness of reporting, no stake system, they deal the problem with the Host for you…Have a look if you want to try : https://beta.bounty0x.io

Questions ?Feel free to comment here, I will try to answer and improve the guide.You can check the Bounty0x help section too where you will find more specific answers to more technical points : FAQ